


Christmas Capers of a snowy variety

by a_wonderingmind



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Not Canon Compliant, Or something more?, and jack is a loveable arse, crushing implied, daniel sousa is a bby, i just want to get this out for christmas day, its only 8pm here so its fine, ive been at it for the last 3 days, on poor sousa's side anyway, the great storm of '47, yes I know this is technically out of the canon timeline but I'll do another itsfineshhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 12:13:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13146477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_wonderingmind/pseuds/a_wonderingmind
Summary: It's Christmas Eve 1947, and Peggy and Sousa are on the graveyard shift. What could possibly go wrong?





	Christmas Capers of a snowy variety

**Author's Note:**

> I rise from above the pile of A-level coursework!  
> This is my 2p's worth to the many other stories based off this particular storm. I realise that the storm was Christmas 1947, so that's after LA, so the plot bunnies are jumping for a canon compliant story including this storm as well - hopefully I'll have time in this holiday to do it! (Anyone who would like to beta that, your help would be much appreciated, I'm on tumblr as @a-wonderingmind !)

At least it’s me in reserve, and not someone else with a family, Peggy thought as she shut the creaky old door to the Bell Company. Or she thought she shut it, as a gust of wind blew a slew of snow in before she could slam it shut again with both hands. It was Christmas Eve, and snowing steadily. The radio said it should stop in the early hours of the morning, but by them who knows what chaos it may have caused with traffic. She wasn’t that fond of any of the meatheads in her office, but they had families that she was sure would enjoy their company more than her on Christmas Day. Poor Reese had to drop out of this shift at the last minute, with his son having slipped on the ice from yesterday’s snow and broken his arm. She wondered which poor sod she was going to spend her Christmas Eve with, and just hoped it wasn’t someone as obnoxious as Krezminski, or, god forbid, Krezminski himself. It came with great relief, then, when she saw the tidy sweater vest and black combed back hair of Sousa as she turned the corner into the bullpen. He, on the other hand, wore a slightly startled look to her resigned one.   
“I’m glad you’re not Krezminski,” she said, surprise turning to a friendly grin.  
“I could say the same to you” he smiled back. “I didn’t think you were on the night shift list,”  
“Oh, I wasn't until about two weeks ago, something about women not having to do night work - I shouldn’t be surprised if Thompson’s fragile ego was part of the reason somewhere.”  
Sousa snorted.  
“So, what normally happens on a night like this?”  
He gestured to the piles of paper in front of him, and she nodded.  
“We man the phones too, but I don’t think much will come through on night like this, not until the snow stops anyway,”   
“Right, well then…” she said brightly, distinctly unimpressed by the idea of it, but glad nonetheless for the opportunity to shift some of the superfluous paperwork the guys had so unceremoniously dumped on her. Time passed in relative silence, punctuated only by the occasional remark on someone’s terrible handwriting and the scribbling of pens.

Neither looked up at the clock until Peggy scraped her chair back and walked over to the filing cabinets along the side wall. She deposited a handful in a open drawer, and grabbed the step stool for the ones on top. She motioned to Daniel’s expanding pile, asking whether he wanted them done as well.  
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” he exclaimed, “I don’t want to force even more paper on you.”  
She gave him a look of ‘really?’, lips turned up in jest.  
“You are not forcing me, I am offering, so just pass me the damn files,”  
“Yes ma’am,” he chuckled, returning the smile.  
The next five minutes was spent in comfortable silence, broken only by the click of Sousa’s crutch and the occasional scrape of the ladder as it was moved from place to place. At some point Peggy turned the radio on, and soon the last song stopped crooning and the weather report came on. They looked at the radio in dismay from where the crackly warning of continuing snow and no sign of stopping came, looked out at another flurry of snow, and back at each other in resignation.

“Well, we might as well make the most of it if we’re not gonna get out of here before the 26th - I think one of the girls downstairs has a stash of hot chocolate, if you want to do something special to remember our forced togetherness this Christmas,”  
“You make it sound like Christmas dinner with the in-laws Peg, I’m not that bad really!” he ribbed.  
He didn't catch exactly what she said as she rounded the door, but it sounded like something in the affirmative. What he knew he heard right was the surprised shriek and corresponding thump that followed. The view that greeted him when he got to Peg was simultaneously very funny and a little painful to witness. There she was, sitting in a puddle of water like a child and with a very child-like annoyed look on her face to match, but as soon as she put weight on her left ankle she hissed. There was a box of spoons tipped on its side, and the tin of hot chocolate sitting on the shelf tauntingly. He lent down to give her hand, but she placed the spoons in it instead. He set them down on the shelf, before taking a couple and reoffering the hand, spoons safely in his pocket. She grudgingly took it, but not before insisting on lurching over for the chocolate powder. Stumbling back up to the marginally comfier chairs in the conference room, Peggy began to explain -  
“It’s okay really, I just leaned back with the box and the blasted snow from earlier had melted into a puddle so I just slipped, I’m fine,”  
Sousa side-eyed her disbelievingly.  
“And the evidence you’re fine is where exactly? You’re leaning on my crutch arm as much as I am!”  
Peggy just scowled. Once they got into the chairs, Peggy was instructed to put your leg up so that I can have a proper look at it please, which she did with only minimal grumbling. Sousa ascertained that thankfully it was only a sprain, but it would still need a cold cloth to reduce the swelling. He could swear he was only gone a minute to get her a change of clothes from her go bag and find a cloth to wet while she got changed, but she somehow found Chief Dooley’s stash of rum.   
“I thought we could use something stronger. It is Christmas after all.”  
He just laughed and nodded in agreement.  
He had just got back from wetting the cloth and she was already dressed and pivoting between the kettle and two mugs on the table, used spoons beside them. He sighed, and offered a hand to lead her to the chair.   
“I hate having people help me,”  
“I learnt this the hard way - but sometimes you gotta let other people do the heavy lifting - no pun intended,” he said, laying the cloth over the now angry red bump.  
“What, and you think you could do the lifting?”  
A flicker of something appeared on his face which disappeared as soon as it came.  
“I’m sorry; that was callous, I apologise,”  
“No, it’s okay, its just not everyone is so... calm about my… condition like you are, not even the guys are - I haven’t joked about it since, well, Atlantic City,”  
Peggy just shrugged. “To me, it’s just another part of you,”  
There was a comfortable pause, and then Peggy spoke up again. “Well, at least we did the filing earlier!”   
He gave a sort of relieved laugh as he realised what she was saying - with both of them having various degrees of a non-working leg, scaling a ladder would have been difficult for either person.  
Peggy pored a generous amount of rum into their mugs, and went to put it away, already indignantly hopping away before Daniel could stop her. Plopping back into her seat, she explained -  
“In the immediate post war, we were staying in this ruin in Berlin, and the local barlady came and gave us hot cocoa with rum in it, said she called it ‘Tode Tante’ - which means dead aunt, so we were understandably confused for a bit, though it was just what we all needed,”  
“A dead aunt is a bit macabre though, I’ll admit,” he said. “We also normally go through the newspapers - just to check there’s nothing we need to pay attention to,”  
He got up to get them, and when he returned he was surprised to find the Peggy was actually still in her seat. Half her mug had been drunk though. It had been a pretty quiet news day, only the occasional sob story of a soldier finally reunited with family and friends, and the usual advertisements and so on, thought Daniel. He looked up at Peg, who was looking like she was falling asleep over the table. It couldn't have been five minutes later when she piped up -  
“When are they supposed to come on shift?”  
Sousa replied only with a gesture to the clock and a grunt, not looking up from his paper. The clock said 6am. He did look up when he heard the scraping of chairs and a warm weight up against his good side. Apparently, she managed to use her working foot to maneuver her chair so that her leg was resting on it and her back was resting on him.   
“Just for a little bit - wake me up in half an hour please,” she muttered, getting ever quieter.  
“Sure.” He rolled his eyes.  
He wasn’t entirely certain, but he swore he heard a sigh of content and a murmured ‘you’re warm’ as her weight settled somewhere between his shoulder blade and ribs. He leant back, thinking to himself that she also was quite warm, and that maybe five minutes wouldn’t be to bad, just until half past…

“Wake up, princesses!”  
“Sod off, Jack.”  
Peggy, clearly, was having none of this.  
“What time is it?”  
“Well, Danny boy, it is now eleven thirty on christmas day, and I am here to rescue you two lovebirds, or am I reading the situation wrong?”  
Peggy rolled her eyes and gave Jack a unamused stare.   
Sousa, however, went as red as Father Christmas.  
(It was just as well Peggy couldn’t see.)


End file.
